


A Story-Scene for Spring & Other Short Original Fics (2000-2005)

by Rubynye



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M, Minoan, Multi, Orgy, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2004-03-25
Updated: 2009-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 17,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tinea is pronounced Tin-EY-ah. (A certain unfortunate coincidence was pointed out to me...)</p></blockquote>





	1. A Story-Scene For Spring

Finally, today, it smelled like spring. So I wrote this.

" _Oh. Oh, oh._ ."

 _Oh._ The last tremors of pleasure rippled through me, slowly releasing their hold. I drew a great shuddering breath, and when I could think again I opened my eyes. My forehead was resting on Tehani's chest; I could feel his heart thudding at my brow, as he gasped once more, his whipcord body still tense below and within mine. My own chest still heaving, I took another deep draught of air; my throat tingled, sore from screaming. The Power was draining out of me, leaving me boneless upon Tehani; we both sank into limpness as he came down from his own peak, as the Power that had caught us up left us again, laying us down.

A wisp of evening mist curled through the light-well. Tehani took a deep breath, his heart starting to slow beneath my cheek, and I guiltily thought I should rise up off him, but I couldn’t move, my bones feeling as if they’d gone to jelly. "Estai?" he whispered, dragging one hand up over my damp back to my head, and I raised my heavy head into his touch, leaning my cheek against that hand as I smiled shakily at him. "Tehani," I replied, as he blinked hazed grey eyes at me, his smile as shaky. "Tehani, what did we just _do_?"

Tehani shook his head a little, as dazed as I was. It had started as a pleasant rainy-day kissing game, four youths, two maidens, a pot of wine and one green faience die. That’s how it had begun, with giggles, light kisses, and rising dares, but by the time we had tumbled into pairs there was something much deeper moving through us, lifting us out of ourselves and binding us together as if all six of us lay with each other at once. But then, I suppose, we had, in a way.

Beside me, Ansen coughed and raised himself on one elbow; his curls tumbled free of their fillet; in his arms, Mnemas opened dazed, fluttering eyes and rubbed his face with one hand. Tehani gently pushed me up and off of him, laying me down beside him as Ansen rolled heavily off of Mnemas and onto his back, one sturdy arm coming around me and the other holding Mnemas to his other side. "I feel god-ridden," said Ansen in a small, dazed voice, and Mnemas, slumped against Ansen’s shoulder, could only nod. Dimly I remembered Mnemas’ voice, soaring in ecstasy, but then I’d been screaming for joy myself.

It was about then that we heard the sobbing. I struggled to sit up and saw Jessan, eyes wide, as he cradled Lilea against his shoulder, stroking her hair gently. _Oh, no,_ I thought, along with a word rather less suitable for a priestess-in-training to know. Lilea was the youngest of us, but she was saucy and fair and had stoutly said she had tumbled before. My heart sank to see her cry, even as I was angry with her. A tipsy kissing game was no place for one’s first time.

"Lilea, hush," Jessan whispered to her, as Mnemas laid his hand on her back. "Lilea, did I hurt you?"

"No," she muttered, hardly to be heard against his chest, still sobbing. "No, you didn’t hurt me, you were wonderful, it’s just, it was so much, so _much_ ," and her voice broke on a sob and she pressed her wet face more tightly to him, taking gulping, deep breaths. Mnemas handed Jessan his unwound kilt, and Jessan gratefully kissed him on the cheek and wiped Lilea’s tears away.

I looked around at my dazed friends. It seemed we had raised up more of a love-fire than we had reckoned on, and scorched ourselves with it. As if hearing my thought, Ansen commented, "I think we raised up Something we did not intend. It was wonderful---" Mnemas smiled, blushing slightly and leaning his head on Ansen’s shoulder---"but it may have been rather overmuch for us to handle."

Tehani gasped and sat up at that, and when I turned to him, his grey eyes were shining. "It’s the Equinox tomorrow! No wonder! The Spring Flower dance is in eight days, at the next Full Moon. "

"No wonder," I agreed, nodding. Tehani has a mind near as quick as his slender legs. "So this was our first Spring Flower, then."

"No wonder only adults are supposed to dance it," said Jessan ruefully; Lilea was silent in his arms, still clinging to him. "I think it _was_ a bit much for us." I wanted to disagree, but wasn't sure I could; It had been pleasure, bright and burning, but pleasure much more fierce and overwhelming than we had expected. It seemed we had indeed been god-ridden, and no one can bear a god and return unscathed.

The silence stretched between us all as we thought about what we’d unwittingly done, until Tehani thought well once more. "At least the Palace Gardens should grow well now because of us," he said, and that made all of us, even Lilea, laugh.


	2. In all seriousness

Today I'm doing ok. Barring catastrophe, anyway. I'm gearing up to see my parents this weekend (another entry for that), I just added another yummy recipe to my repertoire (I should really post about cooking here, I love to cook), things are starting to hopefully look up for some of the people I love (knock on wood), and I'm writing run-on sentences (laugh at myself).

So, I'm going to figure out how I can channel this happiness to benefit my friends and make myself stronger for the days of trial that will come. Meanwhile, here's another little story postcard thing.

This is set in what I call my "alternate-universe Minoan setting", in a line-marriage family.

 

 

Kylia stood watching them breathe, asleep in a puddle of moonlight. Aristion, one of her husbands, had his arm thrown across Tinea, one of her wives; his face was buried in her tousled curly hair. Tinea lay on her back, head tilted backwards, snoring softly, one arm holding Aristion's across her stomach.

Kylia wrapped her arms around herself---she was naked, and cold in the nighttime air---and wondered what she was doing there, watching two of her spouses sleep. She herself had slept alone that night, after a headache in the evening, and woke when the moon was high to find the entire rambling house filled with her sleeping family, not a single one awake. Kylia didn't feel like lighting a lamp and weaving or embroidering, or starting some bread dough for breakfast bread or doing any other night-time task. Truth be told, she felt out of sorts and lonely; since marrying into the family she had grown happily unused to sleeping alone. She wanted arms around her.

But everyone else was asleep, she wasn't going to get those arms tonight. Kylia was just turning away to return to her own bed, across the room, when a hand brushed her behind and she had to stifle a scream of shock.

Kylia spun round to find Tinea smiling up at her sleepily. "You're coming out in goosebumps," she whispered. "Come on, get in." She raised one arm to take Kylia's hand and pull her gently towards the bed.

Kylia smiled and blushed and trembled all at once. "Is there room?" she whispered, bending down to Tinea's ear.

"My sweet co-wife, there's always room." Tinea pulled Kylia's hand; Kylia smiled and took the invitation, climbing over her co-wife as slowly as she could before settling in between Aristion and the wall. Her head pillowed on his back, she reached across him to take Tinea's hand; warm and with her family, she dozed off to a happy sleep.


	3. OK, I apologize for that last one.

And if TSJAFO hadn't posted such a beautiful reply I would just go delete it.

Instead here's a peace offering. It's long, so....

This is set in the world I talked about in one of my replies to Terence.

Story-Postcard #7

T'linn stirred in her sleep and turned over, cracking one eye open. The small skylight, nearly buried in snow, let in a faint shaft of pale light; it must be daytime outside, she thought as she raised herself, her elbow sinking into the thick padding that lined the chamber. At this time of year the daytime was dim, cold, and short, but then that was why every living thing on the planet was hibernating, waiting out the winter and awaiting the springtime.

T'linn looked across her sleeping wife's form to survey the rest of the sleeping-cave's inhabitants, around forty or so of the Andurin people, their short coats of fur a harmonious jumble of warm browns, reds, yellows, whites, purples, greys, and blacks as they snuggled together in the midst of hibernation. Regretfully, she noted that nobody else was awake. After three months of the Dreamtime, with four more to go, T'linn wouldn't've minded a little solid reality and a conversation using her voice for a change.

But, everyone else in the cave was sound asleep, so deeply asleep they weren't even snoring. Their sleeping minds exerted a telepathic pull on T'linn's; she could feel herself sliding back into sleep under their influence, and yawned, and frowned. T'linn was not unequivocally pleased with her species' telepathic heritage, and had set up strong shields from her youth in order to keep some thoughts private, but she couldn't shield all her mind, even temporarily.

Still, it was part of being Andurin, she thought with pleasure and rue, as she unlaced her tail from her son's and, shifting to her hands and knees, stretched it out with the rest of her spine. And the Dreamtime did have its strange pleasures, being as it was nothing more or less than the collective lucid dream of an entire people while they slept the frozen third of their years away.

A small cool breeze whispered across T'linn's raised backside. She turned her head to see the tiniest chink in the roof of the shelter, at the edge of the skylight, as a few ice crystals blew through it. So *that* was what had woken her up. She rose to her feet, a bit unsteadily---she had been asleep for three months, after all---and stretched; watching her breasts bounce as she wiggled from side to side, T'linn thought with amusement of what her wife would say if she'd been awake to see. Then it was a moment's work to pick her way across her sleeping friends and family to the supply niche and find the caulk to seal the hole snugly shut.

The effort wearied her, though, far more than it should; but then, all those friends and family were pulling T'linn back into their dreams with their minds, and she found no good reason to argue. T'linn sat down and leaned over her son for a moment, where he lay snuggled between his father and his half-sister; then, twining her tail with that of her son's father, T'linn lay down again, draping an arm over her wife, and closed her eyes.


	4. And sommat to read.

From a story I'm working on. :)

Don't worry, this is a *happy* story. I just realized the excerpt seems perhaps slightly creepy at the end, but this is a happy story.

Herotima stopped running for a moment; what good would it do her to arrive exhausted? Not that she knew yet where she was going, but she trusted her moira, and her moira sang to her that she was going someplace important, someplace away from her childhood and towards her future.

And away from her grandmother. Ever since Herotima had turned fourteen all her grandmother could talk of was that she must be *careful*, and *guard* her *value* (meaning her maidenhead), as it was almost all her dowry. In her calmer moments that advice made some sense to Herotima; her mother had been a free and wandering spirit who had collected four surviving babies and turned them all over to her mother, Herotima's grandmother, before dying beautiful, young, and at the hands of a lover. Though her grandmother hadn't yet turned forty when the last of them had been born, she grumbled endlessly about having to raise four rambunctious children in her old age; Herotima, wild incautious Herotima, was her special vexation. And Herotima did not often have calm moments.

She was rather deep into the woods by now, and the sun was rising towards noon, so she sat down on a sun-dappled rock, fanning herself with the edge of her gown and cooling her feet in a small mossy stream that trickled by its base. Her back still tingled where her grandmother had beaten her, after having discovered Herotima kissing the younger son of the family two farms down; her grandmother wasn't really strong enough to break the skin, and Herotima was mostly just piqued, at herself for getting caught as much as at her grandmother for spoiling her fun. She had turned eighteen last month, and despite cooperating with her older sister to help each other have romances, had managed no more than two love affairs in her short life before her sister married and she found herself without an ally. This could have been the third, but now the poor boy was quite scared off, and Herotima knew she'd find no ally in her brother or younger sister, who had believed their grandmother's conservative claptrap.

Herotima didn't. And her moira was calling her on, so she got up again and ran off on her way, galloping for the helluvit like a filly stretching her legs.

She heard voices. Men's voices. But before she thought to stop she had skidded right into a large glade full of men, the glade often jokingly referred to in her villiage as the "Agora" . It was a meeting place for several villiages around, providing a kind of intellectual critical mass that let the villiages rise culturally towards the level of small towns, and it was usually full of men relaxing for awhile. It was the kind of place where respectable women didn't go alone or for very long, and respectable unmarried girls went not at all.

Herotima stopped as conversation swirled to a halt around her. The men were looking at her, maybe ten in this part of the Agora, as was the only woman she saw, a polished-looking lady of middle years with her shawl thrown over her head to protect her fair skin. Herotima looked around her, chest heaving as she caught her breath, and saw how the men were looking at her. They were smiling. They looked like hungry diners whose lunch had just arrived.


	5. For Tigerbright

and any other friends who are bored today: the verbal equivalent of a doodle. Since it's all out of my head I may have gotten a few historical details wrong; please forgive me.

King Enlilishma turned from the low table with a plate which he placed before the Lady Shudabli, and she felt her face burn with pleasure and embarassment. She was his subject and servant, she should be serving him! But the King insisted, every time they dined together, and it seemed to Shudabli in her more self-flattering moments that he was possibly rather fond of her.

She tried to dimple as she smiled at him, and was rewarded by his own smile, broad and full of young teeth from within his curly beard. It was only the fourth year of his reign, and the third of her tenure as High Priestess of Inanna, here in Uruk; they had basically started their reigns together. Every Spring at the New Moon festival they represented the marriage of the gods and humanity before the people (and to start the fertility rites), so it was important that they work well together.

But, Shudabli thought as she glanced through her lashes at her King and friend, it had gone further than that. She smiled into her wine, and Enlilishma smiled at her, which made her blush and smile even wider.

[there was going to be more but I just got yelled at.]


	6. Incidentally

I moved my web page, and while moving everything I looked through some of my files and found this.

Birdsong was the first sensation to filter into the darkness behind Aeiope's eyes. Birdsong, and the warm human chest her cheek rested on, a strong-sounding heart beating languidly within it. And the warm male smellof the man whose chest she was pillowwed on, mingled with the musky sweetness of freshly-turned earth, the feel of his sleeping hand nestled into the small of her back, the air across her bare skin

Aeiope sat up, opening her eyes. She was in the shade of a tree, one of the broad old oaks of the West Garden, and beside her lay a sleeping young man, pleasant-looking, his black wavy hair full of grass and twigs, one of his large stoneworker's hands still on her thigh. Beyond him was a small heap of tumbled cloth, and it was afternoon.

They had fled the Palace in late morning; already it seemed a year ago. Aeiope smiled as she saw another woman stir and wake in her same predicament; the West Garden was dotted with couples and triads still asleep, recovering from having been caught in Peleia's sacred madness in their joy at surviving the earthquake. As Aeiope and her friend---she still didn't know his name---had been. A cooler breeze curled past her shoulders, and she reached across him to see what she had left of her dress.

It wasn't much. The chiton ended at knee length on one side and waist length on the other; he had been unstinting when he freed her from the stone block that threatened to trap her in the collapsing Palace. The chiton and a loincloth were all Aeiope had been wearing that day, and it seemed they might be all the clothing she had to her name for days yet. But the thought couldn't grieve her. Life was awakened in her, beating its wings; what did clothes matter to that?

It felt like forever since Aeiope had felt alive like this; it had been a year and a half or more since the fever that swept through the Island like wildfire, that scorched Aeiope but left her alive while her husband and baby daughter were consumed. She was sixteen, she had been married for a year, and now all her life looked to be over; as soon as she had her strength back she tried to kill herself twice, but the other priestesses stopped her both times. So sank into a kind of waking sleep, trying to curl back into herself like a bud unblooming, and wished for death till the prayer became a habit. She ate as little as she could manage, and slept alone even during the festivals, punishing herself for still being alive when the man she meant to spend her life with and their child were dead.

Still, in a Palace in a City one must look at people, and Aeiope found faces to trade smiles with on her daily rounds; other priestesses, guards, artists; she rarely asked names or talked for very long, but took the smiles as they were. When the great earthquake struck and her body decided for her to live and to flee, a block from a crumbling wall knocked her down and pinned her dress; she was trying to unlace herself with shaking fingers when one of those friends saw her, tore her dress asunder to free her, and half-carried her outside. The tide of their flight carried them to the foot of one of the great trees of the West Garden, where they paused for breath, looked at each other, and fell on each other like lions in the spring.

And now here she was, naked in the afternoon, alive as she hadn't been since her family died, the self-reproach burned away in the Goddess's holy fire. The Goddess had heard her prayers for death, and answered with a resounding "no", and Aeiope felt overflowing with gratitude and light. And rather in need of a comb and a bath.

She looked at her friend as he stirred against her, and he opened big dark eyes and smiled at her. She smiled back as she said, "I am Aeiope, and I thank you for saving me. What is your name?"


	7. Drabbles.

[](http://cadhla.livejournal.com/profile)[**cadhla**](http://cadhla.livejournal.com/) has taught us the art of the [drabble](http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?itemid=23757202).

I've had this idea in my head all day. Finally, it's out. Thank you, Cadhla. :)

"Priestess", he said.

"No." She turned, brushing her cloak back, her blue eyes luminous in the  
dimness. "You know my name."

He'd spent four young years joyfully drowning in those wells of light. Oh,  
to swim in them now.... "You are a sworn maiden of the Goddess."

She dropped her cloak; her bare arms glowed against the dark tapestry. He  
came to her, her skin sweetly burning his hands, her breath desert-hot  
against his neck, her heart thudding counterpoint to his. She lifted her  
face to his, luminescent eyes heavy-lidded, whispering against his  
lips "don't let me think."


	8. Disturbing Drabble.

I really like this prose form. I hope to become good at it, not least because a hundred-word short-short would fit nicely on a shrink magnet (if I could find a manual typewriter).

However, this one is, um, a little disturbing. At least it disturbed me, and I wrote it.

"Master?" Eyes downcast, perfectly submissive, she waited for his nod before continuing. "Please don't lend me to your brother again." She looked up entreatingly, one large eye ringed by a livid, black bruise.

"He did that to you?" He stooped to kiss the bruised eyelid, and smiled at her. "Only please me, and it is granted."

Obediently she knelt; he twined fingers gently in her shoulder-length curls. "I spoil you, my beauty, but I can't deny my favorite, can I? I could never let you go."

Even if her mouth weren't full she wouldn't have said what she thought.


	9. A story-postcard, first draft

Inspired by various things and events. If this is utterly incoherent it's because my fiance draped himself over me while I was trying to write it.

"Where do you think you're going?" Xirtos demanded of his wife. Aernoe didn't answer; she merely smiled at him, that infuriatingly mysterious smile made even spookier by the cloak hooded over her head; his fist itched to smack it off her face, but first he had to catch her, and she was carefully keeping the heavy wood and stone table between them.

She cocked her head, and a long curl spilled out of the hood. "Can you hear the moon, singing in her fullness? No, you can't, you never could." Xirtos snorted, his pulse pounding in his neck. Statements such as that enraged him. Didn't Aernoe know she was making it worse for herself? When he got his hands on her...."Why would the Lord of the Moon sing to an Earthling like you?" he retorted, and smiled his own thin-lipped smile as the barb struck home and Aernoe's eyes darkened. "Lady," she insisted, and he grinned and pressed his advantage. "Your people were defeated," he told her, "as you will be now. You should be counting yourself fortunate that I married you, spear-captive."

That got her angry; her back went rigid. Thinking she'd be off her guard,  
Xirtos pressed his advantage and rushed at Aernoe. She dodged, but he was now squarely between her and the door. "You're not going anywhere!" he growled, grabbing the table with both hands to drag it against the door. It took all his effort; he knew she couldn't move it.

When he looked back again it was his turn to be struck off guard, as his wife had dropped her cloak, revealing that she was naked beneath, mother-naked but for her gold ear-rings. Naked and beautiful....Casually, as if she weren't afraid of him, she walked towards the window, and now Xirtos quailed. Their bedchamber was on the third floor of his house, she couldn't possibly....?

"Aernoe, no!" Xirtos cried, and lunged for her; she dashed, her curls streaking between his fingers as with one foot on the windowsill she leapt out, and iridescent white wings beat in his face! Xirtos found himself leaning out his top-floor window, watching his wife impossibly fly away on swan's wings, moonlight shining on her swiftly shrinking figure, one white feather on the wind all he was left.


	10. Productive Insomnia

Shockingly, after sleeping half the day, I can't sleep. But, I had this idea, so here's another story-postcard rough draft.

I should write some more drabbles. They're much more disciplined than these.

This is dedicated to all my friends who are or have been in LDRs.  
*blow kisses to my fiance*

This is set in my science-fiction world of the planet with the elliptical orbit.

**Lying next to her sister in their shared bed, Killithilis slept peacefully despite her sibling's tossing, her eyes rolling rapidly behind her closed eyelids....**

Killi lay back on whatever-it-was; her surroundings and support were all hazy soft white, a world of soft fiber clouds, veils, mists. That was, she reflected, probably because neither she nor Jinataen were expending much energy on dreaming their setting right now.

Hearing her thought, Jina raised his head from Killi's lap, looking concerned. "Is this boring, Killi? I could make this all more distinct---"

"Nonsense." Killi stroked him with hand and tail. "I'm with my lover in my dream. How can this ever be boring?" He smiled at her. His smile is so beautiful, she thought, remembering the first time she'd seen him, on the makeshift stage in her town's school/library/town hall/community center.But then, her town was really more of a villiage, far south on the eastern shore where the long winter came early and stayed late. Jina was one of a troupe of actors, touring the south of Ardea, just passing through, but they had found one stolen evening to spend in each other's arms before his troupe left again.

"I still can't believe you found me again," she said, or did she think it? Either way, floating together in the softness, she knew he could hear her. She said this every night they found each other in dreams, which was nearly every night now, as they got better at it; every night he gave her the same reply, because she loved to hear it and he loved to tell her. "You left a strong impression on my soul," he said. "I dreamt of finding you every night; I read and concentrated and slept harder, until I did find you." They both smiled, remembering that night, the _feel_ of each other as they shared a dream, so unlike mere-dream phantoms made up by one's mind.

"Now if we could just find each other under the sunlight." Jina smiled ruefully. For some reason, neither could remember where the other lived when they woke up. The blackness of Jina's hair, the swell of Killi's breasts, his warm tenor voice, her exceptionally long and prehensile tail, all those details that had impressed them about each other's physical forms that first day echoed from their dreams into their waking, present in their mental images of themselves and therefore real-feeling in the dreams; similarly, the words they spoke, the songs they sang to each other, would return under the daylight in daydreamt whispers and echoes of melody. But practical details such as Killi's town or which large northwestern city Jina lived in, those escaped them every morning when they woke.

"Soon it will be winter, and we will all be in the Dream," Jina said. "we'll be able to remember then, and find each other next Spring."

Killi kissed his forehead. "Perhaps then my family will believe you exist," she said, smiling. Jina didn't reply in words; he merely kissed her back, but in the midst of the kiss he flickered, his solidity going thin so that Killi's arms felt they would go through him, his form going translucent. "It must be near daybreak already," he said, or thought, the distinction was nearly negligible. "I shall have to rise soon."

Killi sighed, and smiled. "Then let us make the most of the rest of our dream." Twining her tail with his, she kissed him again.


	11. Dear Jesus I Whine.

I don't know why any of you put up with me. I don't know why I put up with me. I want to leave myself in another room and just go away and sleep.

Meanwhile here's something that at least is not me whining my fool head off.

As well as cheesy prose. I wrote this several years ago.

 

The werelyng crouched in the moonlit bushes, observing the lost girl with burning desire. He had not fed for a week now, so as to not make the countrypeople too cautious, so his stomach gnawed at his intestines; however, his hunger went far deeper than that. His spirit needed to be fed far more than his belly.

So he watched the girl pick her way through the dense undergrowth, pushing aside the verdure with small, pale hands, untangling groping twigs from her long curls, which had escaped from the hastily braided swath of black that hung to her waist. Every so often she turned her worried, golden-pink face to the full moon above, whose shape it mirrored, or cried out softly when a branch scraped over her tender young breasts, kept bared in the dress of these Islanders; watching her, the beast felt drool spill in long streams to the ground. Grasping control of himself, he crouched down further and prepared to change.

Watching the girl slowly approach, one tender arm protective over her high, full breasts, the creature marveled at his fortune. The mainland people, pale, proud horse-lords, rarely let any maiden out after sunset, even the slave-girls toughened with hard work; there, the werelyng, who had not yet the power to assume a female form while being male, had to snatch the unwariest and weakest of sinewy, stubborn boys. But, here he had been kept from overfeeding only by caution, since he came to this island on the trade routes' crossings. This island, with its surfeit of girls and women, full-hipped, early-breasted, lush creatures, beholden to no man, not even the consorts they chose, and its people, of whom none would harm another save the greatest cause and none cared who a child's father was. Trusting, wonderful, delicious people, like this fair maiden lost in the woods, late from a rendezvous as like as not.

So, he took his shape and stepped out to meet the girl, the barb baited with his beauty. As he approached her he noticed the shining, polished piece of deep-grey haematite, half again as long as a man's forefinger and shaped like a dagger blade, that she wore pendant between her breasts. An Amulet, he thought scornfully. True, haematite and sky-fallen metal, metal that forged a hard-heavy black but forged too hot for the bronzesmiths to handle, would kill such a one as him, kill his power, but only if it stabbed into him. And what country-warm maiden would stab a kindly stranger?

Especially a handsome one, he thought as he caught her warm, deep brown eyes with his own. He saw his beauty, the pride of Island manhood, reflected in her wide eyes: broad shoulders and narrow waist, shown off by hunting-cloth and boots and well-massaged and oiled skin, long curls of thick hair braided sensibly back, much like her own, strong russet arms reaching out to steady her footing and to greet her. He saw, and smiled proudly. The hook was well-baited.

(There's more, if you like.)


	12. Thoughts, and a promised thank-you.

I think one of the reasons I like Heinlein is that, although I like humanity, I deeply believe in fundamental levels of personality, and that at those levels some people are just jerks, temporarily or permanently. Some hide it from others, some even from themselves, but it's there. And there are people who hide fundamental goodness under a cloak of jerkitude, too.

I'm just a 26-year-old adolescent, I guess. :)

Anyway. This is the thank-you I promised, for all you kind and wonderful people, whom I am better for knowing. I hope reading this is delightful and heartening.

 

 

Sesserae laughed and swatted Raneferkhet’s hand gently. "Don’t pat me while I’m tuning the harp, I’ll break a string," she chided. She had only recently made second rank Palace musician, and at sixteen was young for it, so she was so proud and conscientious she fairly quivered. Ranef grinned and dropped his hand, rolling onto his back to better look at Sess as she tuned, turning hardwood pegs to gently tighten the copper wires. "I wish you could come with me," he said again, and she smiled fondly at him; neither talented musicians nor beautiful maidens with a double handful of suitors up and left their home islands for a strange land, she thought, and she was both. No matter how charming, educated, and handsome this particular suitor, Third Scribe to the Egyptian ambassador. No matter how tempting.

Then he said something that made her drop her harp (albeit on the cushions, not the tiled floor). "Or perhaps I could stay here, he said.

"Stay here? Leave Egypt for your life?" Sess was shocked; Egyptians loved their black land even more than most people desired their homelands. "But I thought the Ambassador was returning---"

"So that Lord Khefernety can replace him, and get out of the hair of his brother our Pharaoh (may he live forever!)." Ranef had clearly thought this through. "I’ll just stay and hold down the Embassy till he arrives; I’m sure everyone would benefit if not all the staff were green. Of course, I’d need to be settled here to do that." Ranef smiled, white teeth flashing in the afternoon sunlight.

"Stay, for me?" Sess looked at her hands, shocked into humility. "There are beautiful well-born girls in Egypt your parents would love to match you to..."

"None of them sing like Isis cradling Horus. None of them shine like Nut, none of them have breasts like pomegranites and lips brushed with wine. None of them have stolen my heart out of my body." Now, Ranef looked unusually, impossibly serious, and Sess stared at his intense, loving face, unable to breathe, feeling herself fall, feeling herself fly. "I want none of them to wife, Sesserae of Knossos. I want you."

"Oh! Oh, I---I---I will make sure you are buried in Egypt, and I beside you!" Sesserae blushed at this blurt off the top of her head, though Ranef grinned; uncharacteristically out of words, she threw herself into Raneferkhet’s arms and kissed him as warmly as she could as he embraced her tightly. Gifts and songs of courting were one thing, but Ranef had offered her his voluntary exile, offered her himself; her family would be all his family, her love all his life. Thinking that, she knew what to say. "Ranef," she breathed against his lips. "Raneferkhet. My husband." She felt him smile at that, before he kissed her again; she felt with one hand for her harp and put it safely on the floor, then wrapped both arms and all her attention and her heart tightly around him.


	13. Dolce Far Niente

I've spent the last two days not doing much, and very glad for the opportunity. WD has told me that he notices that on weekends recently I have been not wanting to do much; he worried a bit to me about if I were OK. I am, I'm just tired.

I'll have to do more on weekends soon anyway, what with Arisia stuff and all that. This was a nice one, though, two and a half days to do nothing. I feel almost ready to go back to work.

This is, of course, a vastly boring entry, so here is something somewhat interesting at least: 

This is a story-scene I wrote awhile ago.

 

The two young Minoans, soldier and priestess, ran desperately down a dark alleyway, dodging between houses and trees as they pelted towards the safety of the House of the Double Axe, where their pursuers, Achaean soldiers, could not enter. The soldier, in only belt and loin-guard, could have run on unimpeded were he not helping his priestess lover, one arm twined with hers; she was still in her heavy ceremonial skirts, which she struggled to hold up with her other hand as they fled.

Suddenly, stumbling on a cobblestone, she dropped the handful of skirt and was tripped; the soldier's momentum carried him a few paces ahead before he could stop. The priestess rolled as she fell, trying to keep her momentum and rise smoothly to her feet, but her pursuers were upon her before she could run a step, pulling her to them by her long curls and dress. With a yell, her soldier leapt on one, whirling him away, but the other dragged her close, one arm round her waist, a dagger to her throat, triumphantly hissing what he intended to do to her before he killed her.

The priestess fought down a swell of panic. _Think_ , she told herself. _Ignore your fear, ignore this Achaean swine and the filthy words he says. Remember what you can do. Think._

All the while as she'd thought this she'd struggled as if she were a frightened maiden, futilely scrabbling at his arms. But her touch was not futile. Her captor pricked her throat with sharp bronze; she froze as if obediently ceasing to struggle, concentrated, and thought, _unheal_.

Power surged from her hands into his arms, rending muscle, unknitting sinew, shattering bone; the ruffian screamed and threw himself back, away from the source of the pain in his arms. As he did so the priestess called the power back, pulling with it the life force in his arms; now they were sacks of dead and pulverized flesh, at the ends of which his hands would die agonizingly, only a little while before the rest of him. He collapsed to the cobbles, whimpering.

The priestess took a deep breath to settle the energy she'd taken; it coursed through her, making her briefly lightheaded and queasy, before settling comfortingly at her core. Then she turned.

Just in time. Her friend had the other assassin down, and raised his arms for a final mace-blow—and the enemy raised up to thrust his dagger into the soldier's slender middle, even as the mace came down. The soldier put all his strength into the mace-blow, then staggered and sank to his knees.

The priestess sucked in her breath, caught up her skirts, and ran to catch her lover, to keep him from collapsing to the ground. As she caught his arm, she called up the energy she'd stripped from the assasin, and more. There was Healing for her to do.


	14. Belated Thank-you and Story Scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tinea is pronounced Tin-EY-ah. (A certain unfortunate coincidence was pointed out to me...)

I never properly thanked you all, did I? Thank you, for all your love and care and support of me as I struggled through to landing my new job, and all your replies to my entries about it.

I thought of this idea just now, sitting here as I am at Wolf and Tigerlily's and [](http://jadasc.livejournal.com/profile)[**jadasc**](http://jadasc.livejournal.com/)'s, and wanted to write it down. I hope it amuses. It deals with sex, though non-graphically.

The setting is my quasi-Minoan line marriage family. Note: Tinea is pronounced Tin-EY-ah. (A certain unfortunate coincidence was pointed out to me...)

Kylia sighed happily, relaxing into the embra ce of the bed as Tilon, one of her husbands, collapsed beside her. He was one of her older husbands, so he was practiced, and patient, and she suspected he'd had a gift for lovemaking even before he'd honed his skills there, just as he'd become a talented potter and joiner. He kissed her cheek and she smiled and kissed the heel of his hand, shivering a little as the occasional aftershock ran through her, enjoying the evening breeze on her damp skin and his warmth beside her in the aftermath of love.

Then Kylia's ears pricked, as she heard, on the roof above the upper bedchamber they lay in, a woman cry out in pleasure. "I think that's Tinea" whispered Kylia to Tilon, who nodded, his dark eyes closed as he listened.

Tinea's moaning quickened into a rhythm and was joined by a male voice, then another...that's right, Kylia remembered, Tinea had shown the visiting travelers to beds on the roof, and apparently stayed to make sure they were comfortable. While Kylia listened, her skin prickling with the slightly naughty pleasure, the trio on the roof peaked, one man nearly as noisy as Tinea, and as they subsided into gasps Kylia heard another woman, in a room two doors down from hers..."is the whole House making love tonight?" she wondered in a whisper, and Tilon laughed breathily beside her and nodded, draping his arm across her stomach.

This time Kylia recognized the man's voice first; it was Aristion, her best friend among her husbands. Sometimes he had this broken moan that was almost a hiccup...the woman with him sobbed out her pleasure, and Kylia wondered if she sounded like that, as sometimes she wept when she peaked. As Kylia listened, embracing Tilon, she heard couple after trio after couple in the House making love together, making an odd and primal and wonderful music, a music almost like that of the Spring and Fall fertility festivals, a music that beat in Kylia's blood...Tilon was breathing faster beside her, and looking at him she saw how it was affecting him, too, and smiled. He kissed her forehead, and she raised her face to kiss his mouth, winding her limbs around him, ready to rejoin the music herself.


	15. Scene #1:"Least of My Kind"

Based on <http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/LEASTOF.HTML>

This came out pretty dark, and I dunno why I picked the POV I did. Revenge fantasies, maybe. Still, this is always what I've envisioned when I've heard that song.

The werewolf was changing back as she slowly died. By now, with her eyes closed, she looked almost human, appearing a comely girl with long fingernails and sideburns, and, of course, covered with blood. Arton kicked her inquisitively, and when she did nothing more than groan softly, bent to pry her knife out of her already-cooling hand.

“She looks like a girl again,” observed Dal, using a rag torn from the werewolf’s blouse to mop the blood from the long scratches on his left arm. “If she’s still alive we could fuck her,” he added hopefully. Arton rounded on him at that, fist raised, and Dal shrank back against the wall. All Arton’s rut was gone, bled out in the desperate fight for life when the small and pretty maiden he and his friends had decided to chivvy and lay by force had turned out to back up her curses and threats by transforming herself into a hairy demon wielding knife and claw. She’d gotten two of them; Tazon had laid hands on her first, and gotten his throat torn out, and Bohenas, Arton’s own little brother, had been bitten so badly he’d bled out while the three other boys were overpowering the werewolf. Only last week they’d caught a girl for Bohenas to have his first lay, and Arton had been delighted to see his brother become a man. And now he was dead. How could Dal still think of fucking with two of their gang dead in the alleyway?

At least they had the werewolf; she had paid dearly for her stubbornness. When she was dead the boys would take her back as proof that a magical demon had attacked them when they were simply out together enjoying life. (Arton didn’t intend to include the bit about them accosting her first, or why. His father had taught him that women came in two kinds, respectable and whores, and that any girl out alone at night must be the latter, but not every one of his elders might be so understanding of youth’s high spirits.) Thinking on this, Arton kicked her again, savagely this time, and was rewarded with a whimper of pain.

But then she smiled, and opened her strange catlike eyes to catch Arton’s. “Listen,” she whispered.

“Die, bitch,” hissed Arton, and he kicked her again, harder, her blood splashing his leg. She closed her eyes, gasping, and lay still, but then he did hear it, far off, a low, eerie howl that made him twitch with horror. Dal twitched, too; even Ennhal, who had sat in a stupor of shock since the end of the fight, raised his head from his bloody hands. “What was _that_?” whispered Dal, trembling.

Arton snorted. “Be a man,” he snapped. He opened his mouth to add more, but never did, as another howl sounded, nearer, and then nearer and nearer, more and more, swelling to a chorus of enraged ululation. Coming closer and closer. Arton looked down at the werewolf; she was still and not breathing, but a smile was on those fang-hiding full lips.

Then something moved, swift in the dimness, at the corner of his vision, and Arton turned, and screamed.


	16. A Short Scribble on Stars

So, I'm a member of [](http://storyseeds.livejournal.com/profile)[**storyseeds**](http://storyseeds.livejournal.com/) (a nifty community run by my friend [](http://griffen.livejournal.com/profile)[**griffen**](http://griffen.livejournal.com/) and today's storyseed grabbed me so hard that I had to stop what I was doing and write down the idea that formed in my head.

(You can see today's storyseed at <http://www.livejournal.com/community/storyseeds/9895.html> )

Maybe I'll turn this into a short story. I dunno as yet. 

 

The viewscreen lit up with orange fire, and suddenly everyone on the bridge was busy. The astronomers typed furiously into their consoles, recording their personal impressions of the supernova even as their instruments recorded data at top speed; the captain and crew, meanwhile, monitored the ship's instruments fiercely, prepared at any moment to remove the Sothis from any danger. A star undergoing its catastrophic death throes was not exactly a safe environment.

And what was I doing during all this?

What I should have been doing was furious scribbling into my own notepad, or filling up the photo-cards I'd brought with me, as the star's expanding, shimmering image, dimmed a millionfold and shifted in spectrum to protect the puny carbon-based observers, filled the viewscreen and every console on the bridge. What I should have been doing was taking copious notes for the article I was going to write, the article I was going to amaze everyone with, the further proof of the talent that had won me a coveted slot as a Junior Science Reporter on this ship during my greater school break.

What I was doing was staring slackjawed.

We forget, even though we fly among them, how large stars are. We forget that Terra's own Sun is over a hundred times wider than Terra, for example. This star had been fifty times wider than Terra's Sun, back in its Main Sequence days; now it had been an immense, unbelievably vast red giant.

Then it shrank. And then it exploded. And its incandescent death-throes filled all the viewscreen, all my vision, all my mind, as the star died in a blast of light and nuclear chemistry that was brighter than this entire side of the Galaxy, that was creating carbon and iron and gold even as I watched, elements that might one day form some young slack-jawed, awestruck sentient even as I stood there now, formed of and clothed in the ashes of eons-dead stars, amazed by the death-throes of this massive star.

I don't know how long I stood there gaping, before the captain, hurrying from one side of the bridge to the other, paused to pat me on the back. "Impressive, isn't it?" she commented, and was long gone before I could make my mouth work to form any words. Not that I had any, really. What words could hold such a huge, amazing event?

I know you're going to tell me that if I think this, then I should send this letter in as my article. I don't know, though. I used to think I could write about anything, but this...no matter how I write about it, nothing comes close to the reality of that star, exploding in front of my face.


	17. A Little Bit of a Story

So, I stayed at work till 5. I seriously don’t know if I’m going to be able to deal with class after this. At any rate, I’m writing this between the phone calls, to amuse myself,; it’s dedicated to Wolf, who insisted on putting a ‘rescue the princess’ quest in his Munchkin Quest, but no ‘rescue the prince’ anywhere.

"Tirollon! You won through! Oh, thank Peleia!" Caelis threw herself into my arms, her arms wound around my neck wonderfully tightly, and it was all I could do to not clutch her tightly. She was alive, she was sane, she was healthy! There's no word for relief like ours, mine to find her well, hers to see me there, and my heart pounded as if trying to reach hers through my mail, my arms begged to clutch her as tightly as possible. Still, a man wearing armor should not give too enthusiastic of an embrace, and we didn't have that much time before I was risking being a dragon's snack. Thinking on this, she reluctantly unwound her arms from my neck; thinking on this, I reluctantly let her out of mine.

I couldn't help pausng to look at her, though. She wiped her wet eyes on her dress's hem, then, as I kept looking, put her hands on her hips and pretended to glare impatiently, but I could see the smile at the corner of her mouth. She was thinner, and wrapped in a gown more decorative and ridiculous than any state robes, and bedizened with an overabundance of jewels, but below all that, she was still my Caelis, her green eyes flashing the same, her freckles darker against paler skin but still there. My Caelis. My princess.

Caelis's smile spread to all of her mouth. "I missed you too," she whispered, kissing her fingertips and placing the kiss on my lips. My lips wished to be rid of the intermediary, but I knew she must have a good reason for not kissing me immediately.

Then she shook her head. "We can...later. We haven't much time now. Help me get these jewels off, and hand me a dagger."

"Off? They look valuable." I took off my gauntlets anyway; Caelis always has a reason. She shook her head as she bent to cut the skirt to a ragged knee length. "They're from his hoard. No matter where I go wearing it, he knows where I am, just as he'd know if we moved anything. Even the embroidery on the hems of this dress is gold thread spun from coins he used to lie on. You can still feel the heat in it." I touched the sleeve she hadn't stripped yet, and the embroidery was indeed warm.

Though I'm hardly a tiring-maid, with my help Caelis was soon stripped of all the jewels. I nearly commented on her bare, vulnerable-looking legs, but she forestalled me, asking, "did you bring it?"

I nodded. I wore her green focus-stone over my heart, next to the skin. WHen I drew it out she saw the smudge of blood on it and cried out, looking at me. I shrugged. "I got hit in the chest a few times."

Caelis narrowwed her green eyes, greener even than the stone. "You shouldn't've put it under your armor."

"I swore to bring it to you. If I hadn't, what use would my coming for you have been?" She shook her head and smiled. I was the only one who had even thought to bring her a weapon. She knew that. But then, we knew each other. She touched my cheek as gently as a kiss, and the thread of power curled down, across my bruised chest, down to the ends of my arms. The broken finger hurt till I gasped, then just as quickly subsided, healed. I was as hale as I'd been yestermorning, before I'd entered the castle. It was my turn to try to look severe, and to fail. "I was fine. You shouldn't waste power on me."

She merely rolled her eyes, and smiled wider, rolling the focus between her palms. "Thank you for bringing it," was all she said, as she put it on, tucking the chain beneath the ragged remains of the dress's once-embroidered decolletage. The stone she tucked between breasts. Fortunate stone. "He can be dressed in mail and facing a dragon, but a man will look at a woman's bosom," she teased, and I smirked. "I've missed that particular bosom."

Unexpectedly, that's what made her eyes fill with tears, and she sat down heavily, wilting. I could have cut my tongue out. "What is it---" dragons can take human form, I thought, hot and horrified---"he _didn't_ \---".

"No." Caelis shook her head, the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes. "No. I still have enough strength to resist his compulsion, and I made it clear that he'd have to , ah, _damage_ me to force me. He doesn't want me damaged, he wants a throne and a magess for a queen, to raise up sorcerous children. But he's old, and patient, and willing to wait. It's been a long, long half year."

She scrubbed her eyes, while I debated stripping off my armor and holding her as she needed, as I longed to; then she looked up. "And it ends tonight," she said, her voice quiet and hard.

I nodded. "My sword, my arm, and my heart are yours, my lady," I said. What else could I say?

Caelis smiled. "And my hand and my heart are yours, as soon as we get home. You'll be a king."

I made a face, to make her laugh. "I don't want to be a king. I just want to be your husband."

"And I your wife." Caelis said softly, leaning her bright head against my chest. I stroked her head with trembling fingers. She was so near...and so far away. We were still deep in the dragon's keep; I'm no wizard, but I knew his magical fetters on her hardly ended at the jewels we'd discarded. Before we could be married, before our kingdom could be safe, we had to escape, or to kill the dragon.

Sometimes it almost frightens me to look at Caelis and see my thoughts in her green eyes. Frightens and delights me. She straightened her shoulders. "Tir, stay behind me."

"You're the princess. I'm the knight." Well, I _had_ to protest.

"I'm also the mage. Besides, I need the strongest sword at my back, the sword that has won through to free me." And she had to praise me. I smiled, and twined my hand in hers, that soft hand whose touch I'd missed for six long months. She smiled back, and we stepped through the doorway together.


	18. Depressing Bit of Fiction

So, sometime in the last couple of weeks, I had this idea for a story and wrote it down. I found it in my heaps of notes this weekend, and decided to write it. It's a depressing story, a brutal-smashing-of-innocence-type story. It's set in the kind of quasi-medieval-Western-European fantasy setting I usually dislike, having overdosed on it in my youth. Maybe this story is my comment on it.

Anyway. 

Once there was a young man, a serf, who despised the cruelty and rapacity of his local lord. The young man took his new wife and moved deep into the woods, where he and his wife lived by growing and gathering rare herbs and fruits. They still paid nominal fealty to their lord, and paid him taxes in produce and coin, but so far from his villages and his immediate reach they had the freedom they had sought; they could, more or less, set their own taxes, and they could escape more onerous facets of his rule such as droit du seigneur and hosting his soldiers.

The couple's settlement grew into a hamlet as three of their daughters and their son grew to adulthood and attracted husbands and a wife to the remote freedom of the settlement. Their youngest child grew up with her nieces and nephews as if they were her siblings, and the couple, now no longer young, dreamed of their hamlet possibly growing into a village, perhaps even a free one. They _were_ on the far edge of their lord's lands...

Meanwhile, the youngest daughter and her niece-playmates grew up happy and wild, running in the woods, bringing back herbs and plants for their parents. The young girls discovered that there was a unicorn in the woods, which would come play with them, let them ride it and garland it, and even healed their wounds if they had an accident. Joyfully they told their parents, who told them it was a magical secret, not to be shared with the traders who occasionally came by the hamlet.

If only they had kept their own advice....

Two months before the youngest daughter's thirteenth birthday, as her family prepared to celebrate her emergence from childhood, her brother and her oldest sister's husband went to the local trading town to trade for rare delicacies and a few yards of fine wool for a birthday dress. Far from their wives, they did a little celebrating of their own in the tavern, and while drunk and cheerful they praised their free woodland home as a place so lovely and unspoilt that unicorns walked there.

The lord of that town was the younger brother of the lord the hamlet owed its fealty to; they were the sons of the lord whom the couple had fled, and were neither one whit an improvement upon their father. When the rumors of unicorns reached the ears of the town's lord, he shared the news with his brother, and they swiftly sent a messenger to the king.

A week before the youngest daughter's thirteenth birthday, on a warm day at the end of summer, she was working in the hamlet instead of off in the woods. Her second sister was worried, because her husband was a day late from an errand to the nearest village, so the girl was helping to do his chores and trying to soothe her sister, when a shout went up and their world was flipped and smashed.

A huge company of soldiers in the king's purple livery, perhaps an hundred strong, swarmed the hamlet. The children were chased down and captured, and almost all the adults butchered, both men and women. The youngest daughter, struggling with a soldier, saw her father come running from the woods at the commotion, only to be cut down; she saw her missing brother-in-law, battered almost beyond recognition, thrown down at the door of his own house and hacked to pieces, and her sister beheaded when she screamed and tried to run to him. The soldiers had arrested him in the village and forced him to guide them to his home.

Sobbing and shocked, the children and the youngest married sister were bound and thrown into a heap together on the common space before the largest house; the soldiers thoroughly looted the houses and the barn, piling clothes, blankets, food, and the plants and potions that had been the hamlet's livelihood beside the children. They divided the loot, including the livestock and the captives, wrenching the youngest married sister's baby from her arms as one group of soldiers dragged her away and another claimed her child, and, as swiftly as they had come, most of the soldiers left again, leaving only battered, looted houses and the rest of the family's adults, dead on the ground.

Ten soldiers remained, with their share of the loot, two half-grown lambs, and the youngest daughter. Joking crudely, they tied her to a tree at the edge of the clearing, binding her braid to the tree so she could not even move her head, gagged her, then left her alone. At first she was terrified that they had left her bound to the tree to die, until she realized that she was being used as bait for the unicorn. At that thought, she wished she were dead.

The hours slowly passed. With her eyes open, all the girl could see were trees, and at the edge of her vision, her brother in a pool of his own blood. With her eyes closed, all she saw was her family being slaughtered, overand over again, burned onto the inside of her eyelids. The soldiers occasionally whispered, and she wondered how they were still alive, how her hatred hadn't burned them all to cinders.

Then a flash of white, tinged with late-afternoon gold, appeared at the other edge of her vision, and the girl struggled till she nearly tore her braid off. No! she thought, as the unicorn, her friend throughout her childhood, walked up to her, sniffing the blood-tinged air with puzzlement, confused by her immobility. It sniffed her, and looked up at her, its eyes deep and liquid, as her own eyes ran over with tears.

An arrow sang through the air and the unicorn's beautiful eyes snapped shut with pain. It flinched away from her, wheeling to run, but a hail of arrows pierced it, staining its white flanks with blood, bringing it down before it could heal itself. The unicorn staggered as the soldiers burst from their hiding place, cheering, and it collapsed at their feet. The girl couldn't see for weeping, as she prayed that the unicorn was dead, as the soldiers sawed off its horn and cut off its ears and tail as proof.

The soldiers set fire to the houses, untied the girl, and dragged her weeping away; she cried ceaselessly, thinking she'd seen the worst she ever would. Later that night, after they had camped and had roasted and eaten the lambs, she found that she had been wrong, as she had it bluntly explained to her why the soldiers had brought her with them. She spent an excruciating week with the soldiers, travelling through the villages of the lord who had betrayed her family, before they came to a large town with a street of brothels. Seeking variety, the soldiers sold the girl to a brothel's owner for the use of ten of his girls that night, and she spent her thirteenth birthday, not celebrating with her family, but weeping in a windowless cubicle, wishing she could die of misery.

As any dark school of wizards knows, an effective way of blowing open a child's potential latent magic is to traumatize the child severely. It's not a guarantee, but then, what in life is? I was that unlucky girl, years ago, and I worked in that brothel for thirty horrible days before I found my magic and broke every lock in the place. My fellow captive girls fled and the guards and owner perished in the fire I set. A local mage found me before I killed myself and sheltered and taught me, and brought me to where I could be taught all I needed to know; my gifts blossomed as my Silver Wing teachers tended them.

Now, ten years later, it is the eve of my twenty-third birthday. I have a different name, and few people know where the beautiful lady-made with the Silver Wing brooch at her throat originally came from; only a few trusted teachers and some villages of freed serfs.... I have come to visit the king's court, ostensibly because he enjoys rarities, and to see his wonderful ivory scepter, said to be carven from a unicorn's horn worth more than a thousand soldiers' pay for a month. Tomorrow will be my birthday, and my gift to the king will be a true and painful appreciation of just what his unicorn-horn scepter really cost.


	19. Probably The Only  'Regular' Fiction I'll Ever Write

aka, Finally Something That's Not Fanfic.

A drabble: "On The Train"

“Hi.”

A warm feminine purr drew the word out to three syllables that wrapped themselves round his ear. Peter looked up into the tea-colored eyes of a handsome woman, black ringlets framing her milk-chocolate-colored face, her red lips curved in a smile which, unfortunately, faded even as he smiled back.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” she stammered. “I thought you were someone else.” And with that, she was gone; Peter watched her gracefully wriggle further into the train car, rather envying his doppelganger whatever he’d done to put that smile on that warm face.


	20. Crimson Leaves

I wrote this for two reasons (well, two and a half). One, Commencement is more-or-less over, so I had a minute or three. Two, as a thank-you to some dear wise friends of mine, who know who they are. And-a-half, because the red-leaved tree by our apartment has been intriguing me for two springtimes now.

At any rate, here is a short sort of story, "Crimson Leaves".

My beloved's father does not love me.

He is not a man who hears the stars singing, the wind sighing, the leaves dancing. He sees what is before his nose and feels what is beneath his hands and believes in the solid and mundane. He is not a man of spirit.

His daughter is a woman of spirit. She sees the Moon's smile and hears the Sea weep. She dances with the leaves and sings to the stars, and I dance with her and I sing with her and I see with her and I love her. But her father does not see what we see, and his disbelief makes him angry, and he does not love me.

 

 

 

 

My beloved was to meet me here tonight, beneath this maple tree, beneath the crescent moon after harvest. I walk in a circle round the tree, and in the dark behind its trunk I meet her father. He has a knife and a sharp smile; I am young but surprised and unarmed. When I am dead he hides me in a gully and covers my blood with fallen leaves.

 

 

 

My beloved walks barefoot in the snow round our tree, the wind in her hair, her tears freezing on her face. She has not seen me for three moons; no one has, not my mother, not my brothers, not our clan, not our tribe. No one but her father, and he tells no one of his dreams, though he starts from sleep to stare into the dark, though the skin sags beneath his eyes and his arrows fly wide of the mark.

My beloved walks, and sings, and weeps. And I can do nothing. I can only know.

 

 

 

Springtime, and the leaves on our tree burst forth, not golden-green like the other maples', but red as my blood. My beloved sweeps aside the crumbling leaves and finds blood-dark ground; she follows her heart and my song in her ear to my gnawed corpse in its ditch. She sprinkles the handfuls of dust to bury me, sings the songs to set me free; she raises her last handful of dust over her head, letting it fall as she plunges her knife into her heart.

 

 

 

 

The next year, there are two blood-leaved trees, and their leaves dance together in the wind.


	21. 'The Sacrifice', Plus DVD Commentary Track

[Thank you for all the song recommendations, BTW. Hopefully I'll return to that post soon.]

So, I found this story in my files, and for some reason decided to repost it here. It makes me blush, but considering that I wrote it in 2000 or so, I suppose it should. It's fantasy-setting het erotica, a bit under 2500 words, with a DVD commentary immediately following. 

**The Sacrifice**

Clean and empty, I awaited the coming of the god.

It was the night of my eighteenth birthday, and I knelt in the smallest, innermost temple courtyard, hearing the birds sing in the springtime and trembling for fear. Dressed in a sheer white linen robe, I knelt, my feet bound to prevent my running away, my hands bound, to prevent my untying my feet. I was bound with embroidered red woolen ribbons, so it would be more comely, but I was bound all the same.

As I waited in the sweet spring night, I thought over my short life. I was a young priestess of our lord Alixias, serving out my four year term in the joy of my maidenhood, in his temple in his sacred city of Darstela. Each year, on the second full moon of the spring, he chose one of us through his oracle to be that year's sacrifice, to await his pleasure. I had never expected the oracle to choose me, as I stood amongst my fellow maiden priestesses; I was short and plump, and several of my fellows were blooming into tall and lissome beauties. But the crowd of girls parted before her aged and bony finger, as she came down from her chair and hobbled, quite directly, right up to me. My friends and fellow-priestesses led me away to starve and purge and bathe me, to give me empty words of congratulation as they dressed me, the eyes of my friends full of mingled envy and pity, the eyes of the others mixing envy with relief. The priestess chosen two years before had left us, her term over, to marry, or I would have asked her counsel; the priestess chosen the last year had been my friend Alete, who lay the next morning as if asleep and smiling, but without breath or life.

But the look on her face....Alete's face shone faintly, as if she had seen into a mystery, a true beauty. A small part of me still envied that smiling peace. But the rest of me was young, could feel my life's sap rising, and wanted to live. How could a mortal lie with a god and rise unscathed? So I knelt, waiting, shivering despite the warm breeze blowing from the sea, hanging my head as I wondered if I would see the sun rise the next morn.

Light glowed through the dark curls laid over my brow. My first wild thought was that I had slept, and nothing had happened for all my fears, and it was the sunrise I'd hoped to see. Tossing my head to throw my hair back, I raised my eyes, and saw my lord, brighter than any sunrise.

He stood there before the bronze railing and smiled at me, impossibly tall and beautiful and male and young, at just the age of the first beard. And he glowed, how he glowed, golden light spilling from him like a generous fountain. I gasped, and couldn't be afraid for beauty. I knew I would willingly trade all the days remaining to me to lie in those glowing arms, held by my lord's lips and eyes. I understood Alete's smile.

I still don't know if he spoke in words, or if I heard his voice vibrate between my ears, a sound like bronze bells. "Greetings, Thaliae," I heard as he extended a hand to me. I thought, _but can I rise, bound like this?_, and looked down at my hands---

\---and the ribbons were darkening into ash, which a wisp of breeze whisked away. As I stared at my wholly unscorched wrists I heard, amused and kind, "I *am* lord of fire. Now, rise, my Thaliae, and come to me." Though my limbs shook, I obeyed, rising as gracefully as I could, which was not overmuch, and walked on trembling legs for many miles, for four steps. His huge hand enfolded mine, firm and hot; fire flowed from his touch, through my veins and into my heart, and all I could do for a long moment was stand there, embraced by that light and fire, before my mind returned to me and I bowed. "My lord," I whispered, looking down at our joined hands, shy and awed.

One finger, laid along my cheek like a sweet firebrand, turned my face up, and eyes like wells of fire caught and held my own. "Thaliae, my handmaiden. Who feared my coming."

My heart felt plunged into a wintry brook. All I wanted was to serve my lord, as I had for two years, and already I'd displeased him, or so I thought. But before I could even put fearful thought to apologetic word he smiled, a smile that made me nearly swoon with delight. "Whom I chose, out of all the maidens who serve my high temple in my white-walled city. Yes, you cannot lie with a god and rise unscathed." I felt my face burn to have my thoughts told to me, but then who would know them better? He smiled at me again and added, "But for your scathe, I give a gift. And," his hand rising into my hair to grasp it commandingly,"for your fair service I give a kiss."

Lips firm and hot on mine, parting my own, arms huge and strong around me, he bore me backwards and I sailed on the tide of his will. What could I hold back, from my lord made flesh? I never noticed the dress as it went the way of the ribbons; all I knew was him, till I found myself lying on furs and clutching him, fingers clenched with passion in his radiant curls, as if he were a mortal like me. Afraid I was disrespectful I forced myself to let go, going limp with the effort, and he pulled his mouth from mine; surprised and bereft I opened my eyes, and he was looking at me, stern and beautiful. "Thaliae, my priestess. I want you entire, including your passion, including your tears." My mouth too full of kisses to speak, I nodded, and he smiled at me, a smile that would warm me even to the chill river of death. "Lest you forget, I will give you a memory," he added, and traced two fingers over my jaw and my throat, and then, when I closed my eyes with pleasure, kissed me right where they join.

The kiss burned with sweet fire, lancing right through me, and I clutched him and screamed, arching my body against his. I needed no divination to feel his satisfaction in his touch as he lifted my hips to his as I heard, "And now we shall see how it is, between a mortal and a god" over my own gasp of pleasure as he entered me.

And how it was. The thread of my memory breaks; his fire pouring through me took my all, left me nothing for reserve, for calmness, for thought. I remember in fragments and flashes, the firm heat of his shoulders under my hands, his kisses burning across my breasts and belly, the incandescent sweet pain of his entrance. I remember my voice as it flew from my throat, my body as it shook against his, my tears of joy. And I do remember the final shining moment.

"Thaliae." His voice called my eyes to open, the light in them scorched and held me. "Thaliae. Do you know why we do this, why I hold you now?"

"My lord," I gasped. He gasped too; he had taken mortal form, and was bound by its rules, and even as he spoke he made us both shake with the force of his thrusts, his breaths punctuating his words. "To bind the earth once more to the sky and the under-earth. To renew the bonds of deity and mortal. This is why I join with you now, and this is why you must cry out for me."

"My lord" was all I could breathe; my world was filled by him, entire and whole, my eyes filled by happy tears that blurred the smile he gave me. He pulled me tightly to his chest with one arm and stroked his way down my body with the other hand, to reach the kernel of my womanhood and lightly brush it with fire. And then I did scream, as all sight fled my eyes, as all thought was swept from my brain, as the tide of his fire pulsed through me one final, highest, brightest time. But even as sleep reached up dark fingers to claim me, I felt hot lips on my brow as I heard a bronzen whisper, "My maiden Thaliae. I am terrible and wise and kind. Am I not a god?"

 

 

 

I awoke in the hour before dawn, my limbs still wrapped around a man, our loins still united. He lay draped slantwise across me, one long arm between my breasts, its hand around my shoulder; his face lay hidden in the crook of his other arm, his hair a tousle of short dark waves. I couldn't see him well in the darkness of moonset; like any mortal, he did not glow. I felt the tooth of disappointment before I smiled to myself, thinking, "Did you think He would still be here? Come now, Thaliae, and meet this young man, my partner in sacrifice." And was it odd to think how I embraced and held within me a man whose true face I had not even ever seen; yet, even in that strangeness my hope was that I liked him and he me.

As I touched his shoulder I felt a wisp of connection, and a small spot on it vanished under my hand; it seemed I now had a healing touch. But before I could think on that he stirred, then swiftly awoke, started, and pulled away to face me.

We regarded each other for a long uncertain moment; all I knew was that he had as little idea of what to say as I did, and I had none. He was little older than I, with a truly pleasant face fuzzed by sleep and drawn by worry and confusion, and he opened his mouth twice before he finally spoke. "My lady," he began in a cracked voice, dark eyes wide; seeing his courage, I trusted my heart and smiled. "I'm Thaliae," I said, reaching out to him, and he took my hand in awe. "And I'm cold. Draw nearer?"

He began to smile at that, and did, reaching out a long arm to pull the water pitcher near and offering it to me as we lay knee to knee. Gratefully, I drank, and laid my head down, and he drank too before he began. "I am Dexias, and....and I hardly remember this night. But I do remember, only---"

"Like fragments of a painted pot. They taught me, that happens to memory when one is god-ridden." I nodded, and he smiled wider, a large mouth with all its teeth. "I remember... I stood in the city square with the other youths, listening to the priestess, and then I heard a noise like a thousand rushing winds, and a voice like bronze bells. 'You will bear me tonight, and find your prize in the morning.' And then....fire ran in all my veins and across my vision, and the pattern of my memory broke. After that to now I only remember flashes. " He blushed, then. "I remember you," he said. "how it felt to be in you. How you screamed. You were----"

I blushed, too, all the way to my nipples, and his gaze followed the blush, then dropped as his deepened. "My lady..." he began again, hesitantly and unsure, starting to recede from me, and something in my heart cried "no!'. Impulsively I reached out again, not wanting our fragile friendship to break. "I have never met a man like this before," I said, forcing the words out against my shyness. "And you have never met a woman this way. So we have faced something new together, and...and we should be friends for it." Rather clumsily said, but it worked, as he favored me with that broad smile again. "Thaliae. Lady. Yes, if you want me I would be your friend; how could I refuse such a blessing?" I smiled at that, but was confused as he added, "this is far more grace than an ill-favored boy deserves."

"Ill-favored? But---you are handsome!" My honest surprise puzzled him, and he asked, "but, my face---", reaching up to one cheek. Finding only smooth skin there, he disbelievingly stroked his face with both hands; when he finally lowered his hands he was beaming so that I almost thought I saw the faintest traces of a golden glow. "Oh, my lady Thaliae, thank you! You healed my scars!"

"You had scars?" I looked at my hand. The gift...."Thank our lord Alixas," I said slowly as I realized what had been done to us. Slowly, but with mounting joy. "He promised us gifts, and he gave them. I can heal! And you are as beautiful as you should be."

"Me, beautiful?" Dexias looked happy enough to cry, and I smiled at him, resting my head on my hand----and gasped, wincing at the surprise of pain. Dexias sat up, alarmed, and I gasped, "What is it? Under my ear---"

He leaned over me to look in the gray dawnlight. "A burn, in the shape...of a kiss." We looked at each other, struck into silence by awe, for a long moment before i smiled. "My scathe," I said, reaching up, and Dexias smiled back and took my hand. "Well, I suppose, a mortal cannot lie with a god and rise unscathed," he said, and my heart skipped a beat. And there was something in his smile....I shook my head and laughed in my heart at myself. "At any rate," I said, looking up at the pink-streaked sky, "we should go down and show ourselves so they know we lived."

Dexias blushed again at that. "A naked man, walking into a temple of priestesses? I think I will die of it." I laughed, and, clambering to my feet, offered him a hand. "We will honor you as the one who bore our lord Alixias this year, none so much as I."

"Only honor?" If anything, he looked a small bit sad....and I saw why. "And also befriend," I added, looking up into his face. Dexias smiled that broad smile once more, and kissed me quick-firmly, as if before he lost the courage; I squeezed his hand, and hands entwined we left the small courtyard. 

 

 

 

And now, the DVD commentary, as requested by [](http://rabidsamfan.livejournal.com/profile)[**rabidsamfan**](http://rabidsamfan.livejournal.com/)! 

Clean and empty, I awaited the coming of the god.

**I often begin stories with the original plotbunny. For some reason -- something I read, maybe? -- I'd had this mental image of this girl for weeks, kneeling, waiting in erotic terror, wrists and ankles prettily bound, and eventually wrote the story around it.**

It was the night of my eighteenth birthday, and I knelt in the smallest, innermost temple courtyard, hearing the birds sing in the springtime and trembling for fear. Dressed in a sheer white linen robe, I knelt, my feet bound to prevent my running away, my hands bound, to prevent my untying my feet. I was bound with embroidered red woolen ribbons, so it would be more comely, but I was bound all the same.

**Reading this makes me blush on several different levels. If I were to write an original fantasy story now -- well, at least I didn't set this in Medieval NorthCentralish Europe, I set it in kinda-sorta Iron Age Mediterranean Europe.**

As I waited in the sweet spring night, I thought over my short life. I was a young priestess of our lord Alixias, serving out my four year term in the joy of my maidenhood, in his temple in his sacred city of Darstela. Each year, on the second full moon of the spring, he chose one of us through his oracle to be that year's sacrifice, to await his pleasure. I had never expected the oracle to choose me, as I stood amongst my fellow maiden priestesses; I was short and plump, and several of my fellows were blooming into tall and lissome beauties. But the crowd of girls parted before her aged and bony finger, as she came down from her chair and hobbled, quite directly, right up to me. My friends and fellow-priestesses led me away to starve and purge and bathe me, to give me empty words of congratulation as they dressed me, the eyes of my friends full of mingled envy and pity, the eyes of the others mixing envy with relief. The priestess chosen two years before had left us, her term over, to marry, or I would have asked her counsel; the priestess chosen the last year had been my friend Alete, who lay the next morning as if asleep and smiling, but without breath or life.

**More blushing, this time at the quality of the infodump, and the prose. But then my prose has always been breathless. And behold, I _was_ brave enough to make my little heroine not slender. *snerk at myself* **

But the look on her face.... Alete's face shone faintly, as if she had seen into a mystery, a true beauty. A small part of me still envied that smiling peace. But the rest of me was young, could feel my life's sap rising, and wanted to live. How could a mortal lie with a god and rise unscathed? So I knelt, waiting, shivering despite the warm breeze blowing from the sea, hanging my head as I wondered if I would see the sun rise the next morn.

**I wrote this in part because I've always been fascinated by the confluence of the sacred and the sexual in many religions, not least because I come from a religious tradition that strictly divides the two.**

Light glowed through the dark curls laid over my brow. My first wild thought was that I had slept, and nothing had happened for all my fears, and it was the sunrise I'd hoped to see. Tossing my head to throw my hair back, I raised my eyes, and saw my lord, brighter than any sunrise.

He stood there before the bronze railing and smiled at me, impossibly tall and beautiful and male and young, at just the age of the first beard. And he glowed, how he glowed, golden light spilling from him like a generous fountain. I gasped, and couldn't be afraid for beauty. I knew I would willingly trade all the days remaining to me to lie in those glowing arms, held by my lord's lips and eyes. I understood Alete's smile.

**Oh, man. I had forgotten borrowing "the age of the first beard", probably from Renault, until rereading this now.**

I still don't know if he spoke in words, or if I heard his voice vibrate between my ears, a sound like bronze bells. "Greetings, Thaliae," I heard as he extended a hand to me. I thought, _but can I rise, bound like this?_, and looked down at my hands---

\---and the ribbons were darkening into ash, which a wisp of breeze whisked away. As I stared at my wholly unscorched wrists I heard, amused and kind, "I _am_ lord of fire. Now, rise, my Thaliae, and come to me." Though my limbs shook, I obeyed, rising as gracefully as I could, which was not overmuch, and walked on trembling legs for many miles, for four steps. His huge hand enfolded mine, firm and hot; fire flowed from his touch, through my veins and into my heart, and all I could do for a long moment was stand there, embraced by that light and fire, before my mind returned to me and I bowed. "My lord," I whispered, looking down at our joined hands, shy and awed.

**I have no idea where I got the names from, aside of intending them to sound pseudo-Hellenic.**

One finger, laid along my cheek like a sweet firebrand, turned my face up, and eyes like wells of fire caught and held my own. "Thaliae, my handmaiden. Who feared my coming."

My heart felt plunged into a wintry brook. All I wanted was to serve my lord, as I had for two years, and already I'd displeased him, or so I thought. But before I could even put fearful thought to apologetic word he smiled, a smile that made me nearly swoon with delight. "Whom I chose, out of all the maidens who serve my high temple in my white-walled city. Yes, you cannot lie with a god and rise unscathed." I felt my face burn to have my thoughts told to me, but then who would know them better? He smiled at me again and added, "But for your scathe, I give a gift. And," his hand rising into my hair to grasp it commandingly, "for your fair service I give a kiss."

**I am so glad I have since discovered the concept of the Id Vortex (and I should put a link to a good definition here) because when writing fiction about sex, including fiction designed to be erotic, there are mindless ways and mindful ways of writing about what personally turns one on. Frex, I realized that today I have posted two stories, written a decade apart, with the same basic plot -- apparently I must rather like tales about people waking up together and then introducing themselves.**

Lips firm and hot on mine, parting my own, arms huge and strong around me, he bore me backwards and I sailed on the tide of his will. What could I hold back, from my lord made flesh? I never noticed the dress as it went the way of the ribbons; all I knew was him, till I found myself lying on furs and clutching him, fingers clenched with passion in his radiant curls, as if he were a mortal like me. Afraid I was disrespectful I forced myself to let go, going limp with the effort, and he pulled his mouth from mine; surprised and bereft I opened my eyes, and he was looking at me, stern and beautiful. "Thaliae, my priestess. I want you entire, including your passion, including your tears." My mouth too full of kisses to speak, I nodded, and he smiled at me, a smile that would warm me even to the chill river of death. "Lest you forget, I will give you a memory," he added, and traced two fingers over my jaw and my throat, and then, when I closed my eyes with pleasure, kissed me right where they join.

The kiss burned with sweet fire, lancing right through me, and I clutched him and screamed, arching my body against his. I needed no divination to feel his satisfaction in his touch as he lifted my hips to his as I heard, "And now we shall see how it is, between a mortal and a god" over my own gasp of pleasure as he entered me.

And how it was. The thread of my memory breaks; his fire pouring through me took my all, left me nothing for reserve, for calmness, for thought. I remember in fragments and flashes, the firm heat of his shoulders under my hands, his kisses burning across my breasts and belly, the incandescent sweet pain of his entrance. I remember my voice as it flew from my throat, my body as it shook against his, my tears of joy. And I do remember the final shining moment.

**Oh, Goddesses of Porn, forgive me my purple prose. *hides face***

"Thaliae." His voice called my eyes to open, the light in them scorched and held me. "Thaliae. Do you know why we do this, why I hold you now?"

"My lord," I gasped. He gasped too; he had taken mortal form, and was bound by its rules, and even as he spoke he made us both shake with the force of his thrusts, his breaths punctuating his words. "To bind the earth once more to the sky and the under-earth. To renew the bonds of deity and mortal. This is why I join with you now, and this is why you must cry out for me."

"My lord" was all I could breathe; my world was filled by him, entire and whole, my eyes filled by happy tears that blurred the smile he gave me. He pulled me tightly to his chest with one arm and stroked his way down my body with the other hand, to reach the kernel of my womanhood and lightly brush it with fire. And then I did scream, as all sight fled my eyes, as all thought was swept from my brain, as the tide of his fire pulsed through me one final, highest, brightest time. But even as sleep reached up dark fingers to claim me, I felt hot lips on my brow as I heard a bronzen whisper, "My maiden Thaliae. I am terrible and wise and kind. Am I not a god?"

**Okay, I do like that last line. I think, within the constraints of the story, I did somewhat convey that Alixis is not just an extra-big human.**

 

 

I awoke in the hour before dawn, my limbs still wrapped around a man, our loins still united. He lay draped slantwise across me, one long arm between my breasts, its hand around my shoulder; his face lay hidden in the crook of his other arm, his hair a tousle of short dark waves. I couldn't see him well in the darkness of moonset; like any mortal, he did not glow. I felt the tooth of disappointment before I smiled to myself, thinking, "Did you think He would still be here? Come now, Thaliae, and meet this young man, my partner in sacrifice." And was it odd to think how I embraced and held within me a man whose true face I had not even ever seen; yet, even in that strangeness my hope was that I liked him and he me.

**I think I like the second half better. Because it's a return to 'reality' it is, perhaps, a shade less purple.**

As I touched his shoulder I felt a wisp of connection, and a small spot on it vanished under my hand; it seemed I now had a healing touch. But before I could think on that he stirred, then swiftly awoke, started, and pulled away to face me.

We regarded each other for a long uncertain moment; all I knew was that he had as little idea of what to say as I did, and I had none. He was little older than I, with a truly pleasant face fuzzed by sleep and drawn by worry and confusion, and he opened his mouth twice before he finally spoke. "My lady," he began in a cracked voice, dark eyes wide; seeing his courage, I trusted my heart and smiled. "I'm Thaliae," I said, reaching out to him, and he took my hand in awe. "And I'm cold. Draw nearer?"

**However, I am also glad I know the concept of a Meet Cute (I'd link to TV Tropes' page on it here, but that would be cruel) so I can perhaps write less egregious ones.**

He began to smile at that, and did, reaching out a long arm to pull the water pitcher near and offering it to me as we lay knee to knee. Gratefully, I drank, and laid my head down, and he drank too before he began. "I am Dexias, and....and I hardly remember this night. But I do remember, only---"

**I had that name on my brain for years, until I finally attached it to the first husband of my NaNoWriMo novel's heroine. That guy seems to have kept it.**

"Like fragments of a painted pot. They taught me, that happens to memory when one is god-ridden." I nodded, and he smiled wider, a large mouth with all its teeth. "I remember... I stood in the city square with the other youths, listening to the priestess, and then I heard a noise like a thousand rushing winds, and a voice like bronze bells. 'You will bear me tonight, and find your prize in the morning.' And then....fire ran in all my veins and across my vision, and the pattern of my memory broke. After that to now I only remember flashes. " He blushed, then. "I remember you," he said. "how it felt to be in you. How you screamed. You were----"

**I like the detail about memory not working properly under the influence of intense emotion such as being god-ridden, and have stolen it from here to put into other stories down the line.**

I blushed, too, all the way to my nipples, and his gaze followed the blush, then dropped as his deepened. "My lady..." he began again, hesitantly and unsure, starting to recede from me, and something in my heart cried "no!'. Impulsively I reached out again, not wanting our fragile friendship to break. "I have never met a man like this before," I said, forcing the words out against my shyness. "And you have never met a woman this way. So we have faced something new together, and...and we should be friends for it." Rather clumsily said, but it worked, as he favored me with that broad smile again. "Thaliae. Lady. Yes, if you want me I would be your friend; how could I refuse such a blessing?" I smiled at that, but was confused as he added, "this is far more grace than an ill-favored boy deserves."

"Ill-favored? But---you are handsome!" My honest surprise puzzled him, and he asked, "but, my face---", reaching up to one cheek. Finding only smooth skin there, he disbelievingly stroked his face with both hands; when he finally lowered his hands he was beaming so that I almost thought I saw the faintest traces of a golden glow. "Oh, my lady Thaliae, thank you! You healed my scars!"

"You had scars?" I looked at my hand. The gift...."Thank our lord Alixas," I said slowly as I realized what had been done to us. Slowly, but with mounting joy. "He promised us gifts, and he gave them. I can heal! And you are as beautiful as you should be."

**No one ever said I was subtle, but I did like this bit. Alixas seems to be pretty nice, all things considered. Maybe Alete just had a heart condition or something. Or a semen allergy.**

"Me, beautiful?" Dexias looked happy enough to cry, and I smiled at him, resting my head on my hand----and gasped, wincing at the surprise of pain. Dexias sat up, alarmed, and I gasped, "What is it? Under my ear---"

He leaned over me to look in the gray dawnlight. "A burn, in the shape...of a kiss." We looked at each other, struck into silence by awe, for a long moment before i smiled. "My scathe," I said, reaching up, and Dexias smiled back and took my hand. "Well, I suppose, a mortal cannot lie with a god and rise unscathed," he said, and my heart skipped a beat. And there was something in his smile....I shook my head and laughed in my heart at myself. "At any rate," I said, looking up at the pink-streaked sky, "we should go down and show ourselves so they know we lived."

**Got that, everyone? A mortal cannot lie with a god and rise unscathed! There will be a quiz later.**

Dexias blushed again at that. "A naked man, walking into a temple of priestesses? I think I will die of it." I laughed, and, clambering to my feet, offered him a hand. "We will honor you as the one who bore our lord Alixias this year, none so much as I."

"Only honor?" If anything, he looked a small bit sad....and I saw why. "And also befriend," I added, looking up into his face. Dexias smiled that broad smile once more, and kissed me quick-firmly, as if before he lost the courage; I squeezed his hand, and hands entwined we left the small courtyard.

**I meant to write a sequel about their wedding -- I told you it was a Meet Cute -- but never got the Round Tuit.**


	22. 101 Words About This Icon

Which [](http://papervolcano.livejournal.com/profile)[**papervolcano**](http://papervolcano.livejournal.com/) gave me. :) I wrote this for [](http://popfiend.livejournal.com/profile)[**popfiend**](http://popfiend.livejournal.com/), who requested stories. 

Delia looked around, but the view remained unchanged: darkness in all directions, only flat stone beneath her feet. Since waking here she'd been walking endlessly without any idea of which way to go.

She needed a light.

Almost as soon as she thought it, a glowing ball appeared, hovering before her. She stepped towards it, cupping her hands around it; it flickered in a short complex pattern, as if saying hello.

With it came details: stars winking into being overhead, the air stirring, tufted grass outlining the path. In the distance, dim and dark, stood a bridge.

Holding her light, Delia took a step forward.


	23. A Fictional Thought From 2000 BCE

A tiny snip of historical fiction which I wrote as a comment to [this post](http://xiphias.livejournal.com/524047.html), which which resonated with me more than my comments probably let on.

Set perhaps 2000 BCE or so, somewhere on the banks of the Nile. .

When Asenet had called her husband thrice for the evening meal, she shifted the pot towards the cooler coals so the beans would not scorch, laid a spare cloth over the bread, then went to seek him.

Tjety stood some paces away on the bank above the vegetable patch, face tilted to the evening sky where the last flames of the Sun glowed over the West and Nut's cloak overspread the rest. As Asenet drew near she saw a tear twinkle in the corner of her husband's eye, and silently slipped her arm around his waist, setting her cheek to his shoulder.

Far off, waterfowl called. "Wife," he said at length, his voice hushed, "the world is so great, the sky and the land and the River, great and everlasting when we are but small and brief. I know not how to bear it."

Asenet thought a moment. Then she said, "husband, if you do not come in, I will eat your supper."

Tjety sucked in a breath between his teeth, and laughed, and brought his arm around her shoulders to squeeze her as he turned with her towards the house.


End file.
